Similar Companies

Similar Companies turns companies you already know into more of them. Give POST /v1/similar one or more anchor companies, identified by domain, LinkedIn URL, or name, and it returns companies ranked by how closely they resemble those anchors. There is no query to write and no filters to guess: the anchors themselves define what you are looking for.

Use Similar Companies when the clearest description of your target is "companies like these". If you would rather describe the target in words or filters, use Search. If you already know exactly which companies you want records for, use Record Lookup.

Use cases#

Three situations cover most uses of this endpoint.

Each tab shows the request to send and the outcome you hold when it returns.

curl -X POST https://api.sproutsdata.ai/v1/similar \
  -H "X-API-Key: $SPROUTS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
        "anchors": [
          {"value": "adyen.com", "by": "domain"},
          {"value": "checkout.com", "by": "domain"}
        ],
        "combine": "and",
        "limit": 10
      }'

How it works#

POST /v1/similar ranks companies by vector similarity to the anchors you supply directly, not to a text query.

• Scope: requires dsp.search.read.
• Billing: billed under its own action (dsp.similar): 2 credits for the first 10 results, then 1 credit per next 10. Going back to a page you already loaded is free, and a look-alike search that returns nothing costs nothing.

Anchors

1–10 anchors per request. Each is {value, by, weight}:

Anchors are automatically excluded from their own results: a company can never rank in its own look-alike list. This is not configurable.

combine: and vs or

A single anchor ignores combine entirely.

There is no way to combine and/or rankings against each other or request a fixed proportion per anchor. It is one merged ranking.

Anchor resolution failures

Each anchor is resolved before it can contribute. If every anchor fails to resolve, the call fails with a 422 rather than returning an empty 200:

{
  "status": 422,
  "code": "request.invalid",
  "detail": "no positive anchors resolved — every one failed to fetch / embed"
}

Response

The same envelope as /v1/search, with a narrower resolved_search:

{
  "results": [
    { "id": "market-pay.com", "category": "company", "score": 0.86, "account_name": "Market Pay", "industry": "Finance" }
  ],
  "total": 5,
  "total_is_estimate": false,
  "has_more": true,
  "next_cursor": "eyJmIjoiZjhhMmM0OWQxYjc2MzA1ZCIsIm8iOjEs...",
  "resolved_search": {
    "parser_version": "none",
    "mode": "fast",
    "category": "company",
    "query": null,
    "filters": { "anchors": ["adyen.com", "checkout.com"], "combine": "and" },
    "filters_source": "caller",
    "semantic_query": null,
    "conflicts": [],
    "overrides": []
  },
  "degradation": [],
  "meta": { "request_id": "9c41d6a02b8f4e73a5c0d1e2f3a4b5c6", "environment": "live", "as_of": "2026-08-12T19:52:31Z", "credential": "api_key" }
}

• parser_version is always "none" here. Anchors go straight to the ranking, with no extraction agent.
• resolved_search.filters.anchors echoes the anchor values for display. It is a summary, not a re-postable request body.

Pagination

Cursor pagination works exactly as on /v1/search: same fingerprint freezing, same 24-hour expiry, same 10,000-result depth cap.

Endpoint-specific 422s

Everything in the errors reference applies. The 422s specific to this endpoint, all request.invalid or field validation:

• Every anchor failed to resolve (see above).
• category is anything but company.
• by is a value outside domain / li_url / name.
• More than 10 anchors, or zero anchors.

There is no endpoint-specific 501. Look-alike search is fully live, so a call either succeeds or fails on its input.

Best practices#

• Anchor by domain whenever you have it. name resolution has no disambiguation: two companies sharing a name silently gives you whichever ranks higher.
• Pick combine for the question you're asking. and for "clone this profile" (a shared theme across anchors), or for "explore around these points" (breadth and variety).
• Treat partial anchor resolution as invisible. The response doesn't say which anchors were dropped, so if one anchor matters, verify it resolves: anchor it alone first or look it up via Record Lookup.
• Expect the 422 when every anchor fails. Handle it as "fix your anchors", not as an empty result. The API deliberately refuses to return an empty 200 there.